"Juan Carlos Merida is up in the air, and not just when he is flying the Cessnas of the Airman Flight School here, south of Oklahoma City.

Is he or is he not a terror suspect, linked by circumstance to Zacarias Moussaoui, who is facing trial in the Sept. 11 attacks?

If he is, says Mr. Merida, a 34-year-old Panamanian aviator who has lived in the United States since 1996, why has the Federal Aviation Administration licensed him to fly small planes? Why did the United States Embassy in Panama vouch for him? And why have prominent local businesspeople embraced him?

If he is not, why is he on a watch list that stops him at airports? And why has the government blocked him from learning to fly jets and other heavy aircraft, stymieing his flying career?

For now the questions outnumber the answers, leaving Mr. Merida in what his lawyer calls a Kafkaesque limbo, unable to find out what exactly he is suspected of and unable to clear himself. "

"Doug and Dinsdale Piranha were born, on probation, in a small house in Kipling Road, Southwark, the eldest sons in a family of sixteen. Their father Arthur Piranha, a scrap metal dealer and TV quizmaster, was well known to the police, and a devout Catholic. In 1928 he had married Kitty Malone, an up-and-coming East End boxer. Doug was born in February 1929 and Dinsdale two weeks later; and again a week after that. Someone who remembers them well was their next door neighbour, Mrs April Simnel.

"Oh yes Kipling Road was a typical East End Street, people were in and out of each other's houses with each other's property all day. They were a cheery lot. Cheerful and violent. Doug was keen on boxing, but when he learned to walk he took up putting the boot in the groin. He was very interested in that. His mother had a terrible job getting him to come in for tea. Putting his little boot in he'd be, bless him. All the kids were like that then, they didn't have their heads stuffed with all this Cartesian dualism."

At the age of fifteen Doug and Dinsdale started attending the Ernest Pythagoras Primary School in Clerkenwell. When the Piranhas left school they were called up but were found by an Army Board to be too unstable even for National Service. Denied the opportunity to use their talents in the service of their country, they began to operate what they called 'The Operation'... They would select a victim and then threaten to beat him up if he paid the so-called protection money. Four months later they started another operation which the called 'The Other Operation'. In this racket they selected another victim and threatened not to beat him up if he didn't pay them. One month later they hit upon 'The Other Other Operation'. In this the victim was threatened that if he didn't pay them, they would beat him up. This for the Piranha brothers was the turning point.
...
"one evening in walks Dinsdale with a couple of big lads, one of whom was carrying a tactical nuclear missile. They said I had bought one of their fruit machines and would I pay for it? They wanted three quarters of a million pounds. I thought about it and decided not to go to the Police as I had noticed that the lad with the thermonuclear device was the chief constable for the area. So a week later they called again and told me the cheque had bounced and said... I had to see... Doug.
Well, I was terrified. Everyone was terrified of Doug. I've seen grown men pull their own heads off rather than see Doug. Even Dinsdale was frightened of Doug. He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious." "

In response to the global threat posed by George W. Bush (better known as the supervillain President Evil 2) and the Legion of Terror, Ultimate Nick Fury founded the SHAFT Agency in the summer of 2002.

Rallying the earth's mightiest heroes into a worldwide resistance movement and recruiting the best secret agents into his new intelligence network, Fury began to turn the tables on Bush's criminal empire.

"Our Godless Constitution

by BROOKE ALLEN [from the February 21, 2005 issue]

It is hard to believe that George Bush has ever read the works of George Orwell, but he seems, somehow, to have grasped a few Orwellian precepts. The lesson the President has learned best--and certainly the one that has been the most useful to him--is the axiom that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. One of his Administration's current favorites is the whopper about America having been founded on Christian principles. Our nation was founded not on Christian principles but on Enlightenment ones. God only entered the picture as a very minor player, and Jesus Christ was conspicuously absent.

Our Constitution makes no mention whatever of God. The omission was too obvious to have been anything but deliberate, in spite of Alexander Hamilton's flippant responses when asked about it: According to one account, he said that the new nation was not in need of "foreign aid"; according to another, he simply said "we forgot." But as Hamilton's biographer Ron Chernow points out, Hamilton never forgot anything important.

In the eighty-five essays that make up The Federalist, God is mentioned only twice (both times by Madison, who uses the word, as Gore Vidal has remarked, in the "only Heaven knows" sense). In the Declaration of Independence, He gets two brief nods: a reference to "the Laws of Nature and Nature's God," and the famous line about men being "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights." More blatant official references to a deity date from long after the founding period: "In God We Trust" did not appear on our coinage until the Civil War, and "under God" was introduced into the Pledge of Allegiance during the McCarthy hysteria in 1954 [see Elisabeth Sifton, "The Battle Over the Pledge," April 5, 2004].

In 1797 our government concluded a "Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli, or Barbary," now known simply as the Treaty of Tripoli. Article 11 of the treaty contains these words:

As the Government of the United States...is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion--as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity of Musselmen--and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

This document was endorsed by Secretary of State Timothy Pickering and President John Adams. It was then sent to the Senate for ratification; the vote was unanimous. It is worth pointing out that although this was the 339th time a recorded vote had been required by the Senate, it was only the third unanimous vote in the Senate's history. There is no record of debate or dissent. The text of the treaty was printed in full in the Philadelphia Gazette and in two New York papers, but there were no screams of outrage, as one might expect today. "

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"In one of the most controversial scientific projects ever conceived, a group of university researchers in California's Silicon Valley is preparing to create a mouse whose brain will be composed entirely of human cells.

Researchers at Stanford University have already succeeded in breeding mice with brains that are one per cent human cells.

In the next stage they plan to use stem cells from aborted foetuses to create an animal whose brain cells are 100 per cent human. "

This page is for Wikipedians to list articles that seem a bit unusual. These articles are valuable contributions to the encyclopedia, but are somewhat odd, whimsical, or... well, something you wouldn't expect to find in Encyclopædia Britannica. We should take special care to meet the highest standards of an encyclopedia with these articles so as to not give an appearance of unprofessionality.

"In a view to stave off illegal and fraudulent using your ATM Card our Security Department introduce new security standards.
Modernized AntiFraud technology will provide security and high-quality level of service to manage your money.
Our theft-prevention solutions will take effect urgently."

"In addition to German and English, Sabine speaks French and Italian. She is proficient in basic tactical pistol skills, because she thought it would be a fun thing to learn. She also has a private pilot's license and 350 hours in the air. After reading the Richard Bach book Biplane, she was inspired to fly solo-in an old-style, aerobatic tailwheel plane-from California to Montana. With camping gear in the back so she could land along the route to sleep and refuel. I am not making this up.

Overstock.com's Simon was looking for "a 38 year-old brunette" to play the part (that's Overstock's demographic-about two-thirds of their bargain-hunting customers are women) when she saw Sabine (who is in fact 41) on television (in a Kotex ad). It was love at first sight. Sabine is gorgeous, but in a non-threatening way. Men find her approachable, women think she's friendly. "We didn't want someone that the gal in rural Minnesota couldn't relate to," says Simon. I guess she means the Minnesotan gal who flies aerobatic planes and speaks four languages."

""The boy's version was that he was writing a story about zombies and it was for a portfolio entry that was going to be turned in at school," Atkins said. "The teachers aren't aware of any kind of project like that. The word 'zombies' was not mentioned in the writings."

Atkins said investigators and school officials were concerned because they perceived "a direct threat" to Clark High School in the writings, although the school was never mentioned.

"It did not mention [Clark High School or school officials] specifically but it did mention 'the high school,' and how many teachers were there and how long it would take the police to arrive once they received an emergency call," Atkins said. "It implied very strongly that it was referring to this school."

Atkins said law enforcement agents showed him the writings, which resembled "notes and a plan. ... It sounded to be kind of an advertisement or recruiting to meet a goal, and a goal was stated which was very negative about the school."
...
Under Kentucky law, a person is guilty of terroristic threatening in the second degree when they threaten to "commit any act likely to result in death or serious physical injury" to students, teachers or employees of a school.

"A threat directed at a person or persons or at a school does not need to identify a specific person or persons or school in order for a violation of this section to occur," the law reads. "

"Dear Condi,

I'm glad you've decided to get over your fit of pique and venture north to visit your closest neighbour. It's a chance to learn a thing or two. Maybe more.

I know it seems improbable to your divinely guided master in the White House that mere mortals might disagree with participating in a missile-defence system that has failed in its last three tests, even though the tests themselves were carefully rigged to show results.

But, gosh, we folks above the 49th parallel are somewhat cautious types who can't quite see laying down billions of dollars in a three-dud poker game.

As our erstwhile Prairie-born and bred (and therefore prudent) finance minister pointed out in presenting his recent budget, we've had eight years of balanced or surplus financial accounts. If we're going to spend money, Mr. Goodale added, it will be on day-care and health programs, and even on more foreign aid and improved defence.

Sure, that doesn't match the gargantuan, multi-billion-dollar deficits that your government blithely runs up fighting a "liberation war" in Iraq, laying out more than half of all weapons expenditures in the world, and giving massive tax breaks to the top one per cent of your population while cutting food programs for poor children.

Just chalk that up to a different sense of priorities about what a national government's role should be when there isn't a prevailing mood of manifest destiny.

Coming to Ottawa might also expose you to a parliamentary system that has a thing called question period every day, where those in the executive are held accountable by an opposition for their actions, and where demands for public debate on important topics such as missile defence can be made openly.

You might also notice that it's a system in which the governing party's caucus members are not afraid to tell their leader that their constituents don't want to follow the ideological, perhaps teleological, fantasies of Canada's continental co-inhabitant. And that this leader actually listens to such representations.

Your boss did not avail himself of a similar opportunity to visit our House of Commons during his visit, fearing, it seems, that there might be some signs of dissent. He preferred to issue his diktat on missile defence in front of a highly controlled, pre-selected audience.

Such control-freak antics may work in the virtual one-party state that now prevails in Washington. But in Canada we have a residual belief that politicians should be subject to a few checks and balances, an idea that your country once espoused before the days of empire.

If you want to have us consider your proposals and positions, present them in a proper way, through serious discussion across the table in our cabinet room, as your previous president did when he visited Ottawa. And don't embarrass our prime minister by lobbing a verbal missile at him while he sits on a public stage, with no chance to respond.

Now, I understand that there may have been some miscalculations in Washington based on faulty advice from your resident governor of the "northern territories," Ambassador Cellucci. But you should know by now that he hasn't really won the hearts and minds of most Canadians through his attempts to browbeat and command our allegiance to U.S. policies.

Sadly, Mr. Cellucci has been far too closeted with exclusive groups of 'experts' from Calgary think-tanks and neo-con lobbyists at cross-border conferences to remotely grasp a cross-section of Canadian attitudes (nor American ones, for that matter).

I invite you to expand the narrow perspective that seems to inform your opinions of Canada by ranging far wider in your reach of contacts and discussions. You would find that what is rising in Canada is not so much anti-Americanism, as claimed by your and our right-wing commentators, but fundamental disagreements with certain policies of your government. You would see that rather than just reacting to events by drawing on old conventional wisdoms, many Canadians are trying to think our way through to some ideas that can be helpful in building a more secure world.

These Canadians believe that security can be achieved through well-modulated efforts to protect the rights of people, not just nation-states.

To encourage and advance international co-operation on managing the risk of climate change, they believe that we need agreements like Kyoto.

To protect people against international crimes like genocide and ethnic cleansing, they support new institutions like the International Criminal Court -- which, by the way, you might strongly consider using to hold accountable those committing atrocities today in Darfur, Sudan.

And these Canadians believe that the United Nations should indeed be reformed -- beginning with an agreement to get rid of the veto held by the major powers over humanitarian interventions to stop violence and predatory practices. "

"Winchester [KY] police say William Poole, 18, was taken into custody Tuesday morning. Investigators say they discovered materials at Poole's home that outline possible acts of violence aimed at students, teachers, and police."
...
"My story is based on fiction," said Poole, who faces a second-degree felony terrorist threatening charge. "It's a fake story. I made it up. I've been working on one of my short stories, (and) the short story they found was about zombies. Yes, it did say a high school. It was about a high school over ran by zombies."

Even so, police say the nature of the story makes it a felony. "Anytime you make any threat or possess matter involving a school or function it's a felony in the state of Kentucky," said Winchester Police detective Steven Caudill.

"The school was attacked by zombies"

"So one day I looked at Podcasts. I liked some aspects of them, so I am downloading all of them. Every one. I am going back and swiping older ones as I can find them, but I'm still in the process of getting every single one, so it's taking some time. I have them in languages I've never spoken, and I have listened to less than one tenth of one percent of them. At last count I'm at 75 gigabytes of podcasts which works out to roughly 7,500 individual files. I suspect there are doubles and many missed files, but we'll see if that comes with time.

I'll take a moment to describe how I am doing this. Obviously, I need some space to store all these podcasts, but space, these days, is very cheap. I watch sites that provide specials for hardware, and can purchase a 250 gigabyte hard drive for $100. It's a drive type that is prone to failure, so I buy two. At home, I run these drives on USB2 enclosures, on two separate machines, and I use a program called rsync to keep them synchronized. I download podcasts using a program called doppler, which has several advantages to its approach that are useful for archiving. I have the podcasts on a network drive, so I am not beholden to a specific machine to download the podcasts. I found very quickly that Doppler Radio didn't check to see if you had pointed it to multiple copies of the same feeds (it assumes you're using such a small amount of feeds, that you would always notice the doubles yourself), so I wrote a perl script that yanked out doubles. This has held up for the time being, and while I don't have firm numbers on how much disk space per day this process is taking, I'm not too worried about it."

"A federal district judge in South Carolina ruled Monday that President Bush had greatly overstepped his authority by detaining an American citizen as an enemy combatant for nearly three years without filing criminal charges.

The judge, Henry F. Floyd, ruled that the government must release the American, Jose Padilla, within 45 days from the military brig in Charleston, S.C., where he has been held since June 2002. That left the Bush administration time to appeal, and a Justice Department spokesman, John Nowacki, said officials immediately decided to do so.

In his opinion, Judge Floyd sharply criticized the administration's use of the enemy combatant designation in Mr. Padilla's case.

"The court finds that the president has no power, neither express nor implied, neither constitutional nor statutory, to hold petitioner as an enemy combatant," Judge Floyd wrote.

The judge said he had no choice but to reject the president's claim that he had the power to detain Mr. Padilla, who was arrested in May 2002 at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago and was later accused of having planned to detonate a radiation-spewing "dirty bomb" in the United States as part of a plot by Al Qaeda.

"To do otherwise would not only offend the rule of law and violate this country's constitutional tradition," Judge Floyd wrote, "but it would also be a betrayal of this nation's commitment to the separation of powers that safeguards our democratic values and individual liberties."

Judge Floyd, who was nominated to the court by President Bush in May 2003, said that to agree with the president would "be to engage in judicial activism," a phrase often used by the White House to criticize rulings with which it disagrees."